


Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out

by sulfuric



Series: Crush [1]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Canon Compliant, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Existential Crisis, Light Angst, M/M, Post-Canon, Sad with a Happy Ending, richie is not doing okay my man
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:41:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27238228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sulfuric/pseuds/sulfuric
Summary: Normal people close their eyes and accept that everyone is happy all the time, so he should be too. Richie tries to be normal, he does, but more often than not he forgets that he’s included inpeopleand then the normal part quickly falls off and he stares at Eddie’s closed eyelids until the sun comes up and wonders if he really exists or if he’s just someone that Richie’s constructed; if he’s just an amalgamation of the parts he remembers, stitched back together to make a creature that will do what Richie says and loves him back, just like he’s always wanted.(or: All seven of them make it out of Neibolt, apparently. Richie's not too sure if that's what really happened.)
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Series: Crush [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1988767
Comments: 13
Kudos: 93





	Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out

**Author's Note:**

> hello! this is based loosely on richard siken's _litany in which certain things are crossed out_ , and there are a couple lines i stole from the big man himself. im trying a new thing where i write an it drabble for every single poem in crush because siken makes me crazy and this is the only way i can think to express that without peeling my skin off like a fruit. also this series is going to be out of order because i am godless. litany is my favourite poem in the whole world, so i truly hope yall enjoy!

Sometimes, Richie doesn’t think he’s alive.

It’s not anything flowery or metaphorical like, oh, he’s not living up to his full potential and he’s unhappy so he’s not really living. Maybe a couple months ago he could have said that, but now, he’s actually doing pretty alright for himself. Work is good; he’s writing his own material now, mostly due to his friends encouragement (read: harassment). He _has_ friends, for that matter, and a loving boyfriend that just so happens to be the person he’s been in love with his entire life. There is no longer an alien demon clown trying to kill him and everyone he loves. He’s happy, he really is. 

It’s just that he’s pretty sure he saw Eddie get skewered and subsequently tossed down a cavern, only to bleed out ten minutes later. 

He’s also pretty sure that Eddie is lying in bed beside him, chest rising and falling peacefully in time with his breaths, naked chest decidedly not stabbed and blood, as far as Richie can tell, very much contained inside his body where it’s supposed to be. 

His therapist tells him its PTSD. Bev tells him it’s from the deadlights. His coworkers tell him he’s been hanging out with that horror writer friend of his too much. Some guy in the street tells him it’s the turtle god, whatever the fuck that means.

He remembers before Derry, and after, but not much of the during. He figures it’s probably just another Derry thing. Or at least, this is what he tells himself when Bill makes a joke about one of the insults Stan hurled at the clown and Richie spends the rest of the conversation trying to recall the first time he heard Stan’s adult voice, all grown up.

And so then this is the thing that worries him and starts those thoughts creeping up the back of his throat, because the farthest back he can remember seeing Stan—in all his cardigan-clad hot accountant glory—is when Richie woke up in the hospital after everything. It’s as fuzzy now as it was then: washing up inside a strange, dirty yellow washroom. In someone’s living room, in the yard, in the back of a car watching the blurred flash of lights through the window, cold against his cheek. 

He only _really_ remembers going to the airport and staring at himself in the bathroom mirror, weird and faraway. Sitting on the plane, watching the wing until he was following signs for _Arrivals,_ Eddie standing there waiting for him, smiling in that soft, hopeful way of his—in a way that made Richie frightened, standing useless at the luggage carousel and on his knees with a knife in his hand all at once. Weaving through the city and going up the stairs at Eddie’s apartment, holding his arms close to his sides as he looks at all his things, unfamiliar and wrong. Looking out the window and saying _this doesn’t look much different from home_ _,_ because Eddie was there so it didn’t.

But then he noticed the black sky and all those lights. 

In this version, Eddie is _not_ feeding himself to a bad man against a black sky prickled with small lights, no matter how much Richie thinks he might have. He’s stopped bringing it up, now, because it makes Eddie upset to hear that Richie thinks he died. _What the fuck do you think I am right now, then?_ He asks, eyebrows scrunched down low and angry. He doesn’t get it, because of course he doesn’t. He doesn’t smell death on Richie, or wake up in the middle of the night to check that he isn’t bleeding out, or obsess over memories someone else put inside his brain, just horrible enough that he’ll never understand and he’ll never forget.

Richie doesn’t bring it up. He’s not about to ruin the best relationship he’s ever had just because he’s not sure both parties involved actually exist. 

This doesn’t stop him from thinking about it privately, in the relatively quiet moments like these, Eddie asleep and unknowing beside him. It’s like a call he can’t pick up, phone ringing inside his head with no one on the other line except himself. The receiver is just barely out of reach, mounted too high on the wall—deliberately, as if whoever or whatever put it there didn’t want him to be able to accept the call. Whether this is out of kindness or malice, Richie doesn’t know. He just knows that sometimes his fingers brush the cord hanging down and when he opens his eyes he sees his hands covered in blood that isn’t his. 

He googles things. He thinks about calling Stan and asking him if he can help, if he has these thoughts—the intrusive ones, if that’s what they’re called and that’s what they even _are;_ Richie is afraid to think they feel more like memories than anything else—but he never does because he always thinks _no, you can’t call Stan, he’s dead._ And then he remembers that Stan is very much alive and goes to empty the contents of his stomach into the toilet, instead. 

Normal people don’t forget that their friends are alive. 

Normal people close their eyes and accept that everyone is happy all the time, so he should be too. He tries to be normal, he does, but more often than not he forgets that he’s included in _people_ and then the normal part quickly falls off and he stares at Eddie’s closed eyelids until the sun comes up and wonders if he really exists or if he’s just someone that Richie’s constructed; if he’s just an amalgamation of the parts he remembers, stitched back together to make a creature that will do what Richie says and loves him back, just like he’s always wanted. 

He makes lists that he will never write down or speak: the things that Eddie says, the things he does, the places he goes and the people he knows and the shows he likes and the food he hates. He cross references with all the things he remembers—perfectly, now, just that one three day haze choking him from the inside out—from when they were young. Is any of it different? Is he different? Is he a real person that’s lived a real life? Or is he just a figment, a hasty bootleg that Richie’s mind has deemed close enough? 

Yeah, try telling that to a therapist. _I don’t specialize in couple’s counselling, but I have some colleagues I can refer you to if you and your partner are having difficulties._ He doesn’t bring it up. He tells Eddie he slept great and doesn’t tell him that he doesn’t remember his shoes being at the door of the townhouse. He remembers five sets of shoes and a suitcase that wouldn’t ever be unpacked—wouldn’t be sitting at the back of Eddie’s closet, empty, right there waiting to taunt Richie with the dissonance of its existence if he would just turn his head three inches to the right.

He doesn’t turn his head, and he doesn’t bring it up. This is not some fantasy and he is not the dragon nor the princess. He’s Richie—maybe, but again, ignoring that—and he is happy and he is forgiven and he is in love. 

(This one, of all things, has remained. It’s like a religion. It’s terrifying. It’s the thing damning him and the thing keeping him afloat all at once.)

He gets pretty good at it, all things considered. He greets Eddie in the mornings without checking him for injuries. _Hello darling._ A hand on the chest, loving—and okay, maybe he’s checking. _Sorry about that._ Eddie has the tact not to say anything. He won’t bring it up if Richie doesn’t, and Richie doesn’t bring it up, so. Still, he knows. They’ve had the argument enough times that it had turned into more of a discussion by the time they stopped discussing it. Now, he just gives Richie a look like he is the clearing instead of headlights and gives him a kiss on the forehead, and Richie breathes for the first time ever and thinks that maybe he is alive.

He gets pretty good at it, but pretty good isn’t good enough when he drifts off on Eddie’s shoulder on the subway—you know, that feeling on the edge of sleep when you’re sort of floating, suspended in the space between conscious and not, but then you feel it happening and all of a sudden you’re falling, falling, falling, and you jolt awake and— 

—and they’re inside the train car and Richie is starting to cry because he wakes up with broken legs on ground in the dark one hundred feet below the town that gave him Eddie and took him away, rotting in the sewer while Richie is crossed out, the perfect image of the lover destroyed, every single minute of it his fault and his fault alone. 

Richie is in the wrong cistern, wrong memory, and he is on the subway crying while Eddie shakes his shoulder, _Rich, Rich—hey Rich, wake up, hey!_ He opens his eyes and he hears it, finally, the plea that isn’t a premature celebration—not this time, not in this world. He’s still gasping for breath and he’s aware that he’s making a scene, so he says sorry before he fully knows it, meaning it a hundred times more when he finally turns to see that Eddie is crying, too. 

_I don’t think either of us are supposed to be here,_ he croaks. Eddie just stares at him and Richie knows that it’s not working—the constant erasures, the refolding of the pleats. He’s not the right Richie, at least not for this version of it all.

But maybe it doesn’t matter if Richie’s right or not, because this Eddie is grabbing Richie’s hands and saying, softly, _we’re exactly where we’re supposed to be._ Richie doesn’t think they’re _supposed_ to be on a subway—not on a like, cosmic level or whatever the fuck he meant—so then he starts laughing instead of crying and Eddie looks more scared than anything else so Richie tells him he loves him and Eddie says he loves him too, wiping the tears away with pad of his thumb, warm and soft.

Inside his head he hears a phone ringing and when he opens his eyes, only a subway car with Eddie in it. _Hello, dear,_ he says, and it sounds pretty damn real.

That night they lie curled into each other while Eddie retells him the story. It’s not the version Richie remembers—different rooms, different hallways, different ending—but it’s the one that happened so he soaks in Eddie’s voice, heavy and rough with sleep, and commits the facts to memory. They both work in the morning so they really don’t have this kind of time, but they take it anyway, working through the entire history of human desire until Richie feels like the minutes belong to them and them alone. 

Richie knows that recently they have had their difficulties, and there are probably many things Eddie wants to ask him. But this is not the time—let’s just jump ahead instead, the moment of epiphany bathed in gold light: 

He’s happy. He’s forgiven. He’s alive. He’s alive, he’s alive, he’s alive. He’s sitting at the Blum-Uris kitchen table, peeling the apples for the applesauce while Stan shreds potatoes beside him, humming quietly. _You’re alive,_ he says, not really sure if he’s asking or telling. Stan blinks and says _yes, I am,_ as if it’s the most logical thing in the world. 

Richie looks out the window and watches Patty, Ben, and Eddie in the yard. They’re standing under the canopy of a tree, lush and vibrant _(too vibrant, Richie doesn’t think),_ birdhouse hanging just above their heads. Patty’s gesturing wildly, definitely scaring off any prospective guests to said birdhouse, while Ben nods intermittently and Eddie listens, intent. He can’t hear anything they’re saying, but he can gather the obvious: Ben built them the birdhouse, it’s great, Patty is really excited to be telling Eddie about it. Meanwhile, Bev and Mike linger on the porch, watching from afar just like Richie. Stan has wandered off to the kitchen to check on Bill (tasked with fetching a single yellow onion, nearly ten minutes ago) and Richie is briefly alone with only his apples and his thoughts.

Okay, so maybe he’s not real. Maybe none of this is real, and he’s actually decaying in the deadlights while his real friends are in the cistern doing god knows what. Maybe Eddie doesn’t actually love him back, and Stan isn’t actually alive, and he is alone always and then he will die. 

But except for that he’s not—alone, that is. The other stuff, he might never actually get to know. But even if his friends are a figment of his imagination, they’re still _here._ He can touch them. He can hold them, and be held by them. He can make them applesauce and tell them he loves them. And maybe it really is PTSD, or deadlights superpowers, or Bill’s books, or a turtle god. Maybe it’s all of it. Maybe it’s none of it. But maybe it doesn’t fucking matter, because he’s here with everyone he loves and his heart is beating and it’s _real—_ maybe not objectively, but it’s real for him. 

If it turns out that he wakes up tomorrow and gets dragged out of Neibolt while Eddie’s lifeless corpse rots below his feet, then fucking fine. He can dance on the wreckage and stick his tongue out and say _told you so, motherfucker!_ But until then, he supposes he’s just going to have to suck it up and deal with this wonderful life that has somehow laid itself out for him. 

He takes an apple peel and chews on it. Outside, Eddie turns and catches his eye, that soft and hopeful thing on his face once more. It’s then that Richie knows—it doesn’t matter. Maybe sometimes they’re going to clutch their bellies and roll on the floor, laughing into the dumb persian rug that Eddie loves so much (and okay, maybe Richie kind of loves it, too), and maybe sometimes Richie’s going to think the pattern is blood and that Eddie is holding his organs in. It doesn’t matter because he’s _here,_ alive or not, deadlights or not, right timeline or not.

He’s here. He’s happy, and forgiven, and with everyone he loves. 

He returns the smile, and tilts his head to the seat beside him. _I saved a plate for you._

Eddie quits milling around the yard and comes inside. 

**Author's Note:**

> they're gonna be okay, and so are you.
> 
> comments feed the little goblin baby that sits at the typewriter in my brain, he is looking at you with these big adorable eyes that you can't resist. really, it's quite endearing, i promise. find me on [tumblr](http://losersclub3000.tumblr.com) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/losersclub3000)!


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